The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  Dallin stopped where he was, sighed out a low whistle. “He’d be a weapon in anyone’s hands, regardless of his intentions,” he muttered. “Regardless of their intentions.” Because even putting someone like Siofra aside, what man would resist the temptation to use that weapon, once it was in his hands?

  He shook his head, jaw set.

  All right. So, if he accepted everything the man had told him as truth, there was no way in the world Dallin could turn Ríocht’s ‘Chosen’ over to them. If he did, he might as well stroll up to the Border and plant the white flag himself. And he couldn’t try and get Cald— Wil asylum, or even take him into protective custody, not unless Dallin was prepared to tell his own government why, and he didn’t trust them any more than he trusted the Dominion, not with a weapon like that.

  And while he was entertaining worst-case scenarios, what was to stop the man from wreaking havoc all on his own, just because he could? Believe me, if I were running things… He’d said it like he’d thought about it—and why not? A life like he said he’d led sounded like enough to leave anyone unbalanced. What if he snapped and decided that everyone needed to just go away, curl up and die? Could he do that? Would he?

  Dallin shook his head, frowned. Why was he so willing to believe he wouldn’t?

  Because it goes against something in his core. He was nearly as concerned about the fact that it was wrong when Siofra forced him as he was about the pain.

  Dallin remembered that night in Putnam, watching the man dance sideways down the road of truth, stopping just short of lies until Dallin took away all other avenues. He’d mused at the time that it seemed like some kind of twisted personal tenet of principles. Dallin couldn’t make himself give it a name as pretty as honor. If Cald— Wil had led the life he said he’d led, where would he have learned what honor even was? Dallin kept thinking Wil was so very good at lying, but if all of the tales today were true, he hadn’t really lied about everything else, as Dallin had been assuming all this time. He hadn’t stolen from Ramsford when he’d run; he hadn’t tried to run once he’d promised not to. He seemed to have his own ideas of right and wrong, seemed to have come up with his own personal morality code, and messing with the ‘designs’ went against it.

  Except for when someone pisses him off and he decides to even up the tally.

  Dallin growled. Ran a hand roughly through tangled hair and sighed.

  Maybe… maybe he’s right and it would be better for all if I just… fulfilled his prophecy. Put him down. Quietly and painlessly—I could even do it in his sleep…

  No. It would be nothing less than murder, and there was no honor in murder. He’d killed for his country before, he’d killed for his job—just last night, in fact—but he wouldn’t outright murder for anyone. Apparently, not even for someone who bared his throat for him and asked politely.

  All right, so if it’s all true, I can’t kill him, he can’t go back, and no one can know what he is. And I’m going to have to find a way to keep what he does when he’s dreaming under control.

  Ha. How he was going to do that, he hadn’t even the smallest clue. But still.

  One down.

  Dallin started walking again, came about from the other angle:

  If I assume everything he said was a lie or delusion, he couldn’t have told them about me or Lind, and all that blabber about my mother was hallucinatory twaddle.

  Which solved one very personal problem, but in the scheme of things, it was rather a small one and didn’t really have anything to do with the bulk of the larger dilemma.

  All right, fine. If everything he said was a lie, then the Guild is just the Guild, Siofra is just an ordinary minor diplomat, and they’re looking for Wil because he’s their Chosen and he’s missing. They might even be worried about him; it wouldn’t be unreasonable.

  That would certainly be easy. Except…

  Except, if that were true, what about the Brethren?

  Dallin fetched up short with that thought, found himself standing over a dry streambed, pondering the arid texture of the air, the busy animal sounds pattering about the underbrush, the familiar autumn scents of withering leaves and cooling soil. Thinking how difficult it had been to find water when he’d been tracking his fugitive across the wilderness. Thinking how he’d wondered fractiously more than once when the last time this part of the country had seen rain had been.

  Thinking how quickly and easily the flames in Kenley must have caught.

  The bodies were what had convinced him that it had been the men from the Brethren who’d done whatever magic had been done at the inn, and not Cald— Wil. None of the corpses had been scattered about, as though trying to escape the flames; rather, they were huddled in clusters—entire families, scorched bones in strewn clumps in the middle of smoking holes that were once homes, twenty of them in the broken carcass of what must have been the grange hall. No blackened buckets, half-filled with sooty water, mute testament to having tried and failed to stop the blaze—no survivors.

  None of them had been shot. No telltale hack-marks had been evident on the bones of the remains. They hadn’t been killed and piled to burn—they’d sat there in the middle of the dozen or so small conflagrations and waited to be roasted like compliant slabs of meat.

  Dallin could imagine it all too well: a malevolent spell, the herding of people who walked inside manufactured torpor and did as commanded with no protest or struggle; a match here, a smoking piece of tinder there…

  He wondered which of those men had done the deed. The one he’d shot had been the one to set the spell at the inn, Dallin was more sure of that now than he’d been when he’d initially presented the theory to Locke. But if all of them could do something like that… That would be… more than worrisome. If he was up against hundreds of men who could do that, and with no compunction…

  No, that didn’t fit. If the rest of them could do that, there wouldn’t be much need for those suicide capsules, would there?

  Still, even without that sort of power, they’d turned out to be dangerous enough. For pity’s sake, at least half of those who’d died in Kenley had been children. What kind of men were they?

  Cald— Wil was terrified of them, perhaps even more so than he was of the Guild. Certainly more than he was of Dallin. Terrified enough to put a rusty knife to his own throat, with every intention of plunging it home.

  Dallin’s eyes narrowed as he stared down into the dead streambed, not seeing the parched cracks of cemented silt, not seeing the brilliant colors of dying leaves. Seeing instead the fear, the knife, the eyes that tried to bore into him and couldn’t. Feeling the sympathy that had rocked through him, and the uncomfortable but very present desire to help.

  “All right,” Dallin muttered to the ground. “You’ve told me why you fear the Guild… I think it’s past time I heard about the Brethren.”

  Whatever the Brethren are, they can’t be allowed to get their hands on him, any more than the Dominion. If they can do something like Kenley without that power, I don’t even want to think about what they could do with it.

  Anyway, there was also the fact that, regardless of any other truths or lies or powers—real or imagined or complete lack-thereof—these were not good men, and Dallin was not in the habit of giving bad men what they wanted. Call it his contrary nature.

  Funny. It appeared he’d already made his decision. He wondered if he’d done it just now, or all the way back in that cell. Or perhaps, he reflected morosely, he’d made it back at the inn, watching a beaten man refuse to be beaten.

  Fucking sentiment. It really would be the end of him one day.

  ***

  It was dark by the time he came back, the streets of the quiet village dim-lit with the sputtering glow of the too occasional gas lamp, and even more deserted than the small villages on the outskirts of Putnam at night. His boots crunched lightly over the hardpack of the road, the sporadic rattle of a pot or a low, female laugh and the splash of water coming from the back door of the hos
tel the only sounds to disturb the cold tranquility.

  The glow of lamplight spilt from the Sheriff’s Office, cutting little slices of warm radiance into the night, spilling across the porch and into the road through the barred windows. Locke must be back and wondering where he’d gone—likely also wondering why he’d hared off without leaving word and had left his ‘prisoner’ sitting in his cell, alone and in the dark.

  A scraggy little man came humping from the shadows as Dallin approached, the butt of his rifle tucked into the elbow of his right arm, barrel propped across his chest and buttressed to the stump of his left. Dallin’s hand instinctively went to the holster at his right thigh, but he didn’t bother flicking loose the tether; instead, he nodded to the man.

  “If there’s a password, Sheriff Locke hasn’t given it to me yet,” he said easily, deliberately adding a small friendly smile. “Though, I’ve a badge, if you need to see it.”

  The man puffed a small, liquid snort, horked a mass of snot through his nose then his throat, and spat it into the dirt. “I seen ye last night,” the man told him, wiping spit from the scruff of beard on his chin with the back of his hand, his own manner that of a man who belonged right where he was and was more than happy to welcome one of his own kind. “I didn’t stop ye farther out, ‘cause I figured it was you. Hard to mistake your shape in the dark.”

  Dallin kept his smile, shrugged agreement. He extended his hand. “Dallin Brayden.”

  The man took it, awkwardly shifting the rifle. “Ogden Newell,” he offered.

  “A pleasure, Mister Newell. And I appreciate that you would use your no doubt valuable time to keep watch like this. You’ll understand when I say I hope it will all be for naught.”

  “You and me both,” Newell agreed. He leaned in, face pensive. “You really from Putnam?” he wanted to know.

  “I am.” Dallin tilted his head. “Been there?”

  “Nah,” Newell said, snuffled another load of gunk into his throat, leaned to the side and spat again. “Never really been anywhere but here and Kenley, ‘cept when I was in the army.” He lifted the stump of his arm a bit. “And then you don’t get to see much, ‘cept things you don’t really want to see.”

  Dallin nodded agreement, not really wanting to get into veterans’ laments, but unable yet to make himself go inside. “What unit?” he asked.

  “Oswin’s,” Newell answered. “First Lieutenant, Third Infantry. The Shaw Campaign.”

  “The northern Border?” Dallin lifted his eyebrows. “Some rough clashes on that one.”

  Newell’s eyes narrowed. “You were there?”

  “Cavalry,” Dallin answered. “Captain. Fifth Regiment.”

  “Ah, one o’ them horse toffs, then.” There was a good-natured challenging smirk that went along with the comment, so Dallin didn’t bristle, just shrugged and smiled. “Bet ye still got your warhorse, en’t ye?” Newell prodded.

  That made Dallin snort. “I have, actually. Smug and spoilt, and not good for much anymore but the occasional stud and looking down his full-bred nose at all the other nags, but…” He waved his hand. “He’s a veteran, too, and has the scars to prove it.”

  They were silent for a few moments, companionable, merely watching the night, before Newell twitched so hard that Dallin’s hand went without thought to his sidearm.

  “Brayden.” Newell squinted a narrow look at Dallin through the darkness. “Well, I’ll be damned. You’re the one…” He stared so hard, Dallin nearly wanted to swat him. “What’s it mean?”

  Dallin knew exactly what the man was referring to; that didn’t mean he had to like it. Or cooperate. “What does what mean?” he asked coolly.

  Newell actually snorted. “Mháthair Diabhal—as if you didn’t know.”

  He’d mangled the pronunciation, but even so, the old epithet gave Dallin the same twist it had always done. His jaw tightened. “Mother’s Devil,” he replied shortly. “And that’s the last I want to hear it, if you don’t mind.”

  Newell smiled a little then nodded somberly. To Dallin’s relief, he dropped it and didn’t dip down into war stories. Instead, he turned his gaze back into the darkness, gave it a practiced scrutiny. “Shame, what happened there in Kenley, damn shame.” He shook his shaggy head, grimaced. “Lousy bastards.” He spat again, still eyeing the darkness with wary thoughtfulness.

  Dallin couldn’t help a bit of a jolt. He kept his expression neutral. “What have you heard about Kenley?” he asked, tone carefully mild.

  “Enough,” Newell returned roughly. “More ‘n most. Sheriff told me ‘cause I have what you might call a special interest.” He peered up at Dallin with an angry grimace. “Had a sister there. Two nieces and a nephew. All gone.”

  Dallin looked down, trying not to see the scorched corpses, trying not to wonder which of the small charred skeletons had been this man’s kin. He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.

  A heavy shrug. “You didn’t do it.” It was said matter-of-factly, with no anger and no blame. “It en’t something that’s spread too far, yet, but it’s a small village—Kenley’s only two days’ walk or so, and I’m not the only one with a relation there; people will know soon enough. I figure they’ll go one of two ways: they’ll either blame your friend in there—” He jerked his head over his shoulder. “—and start grumbling about why en’t we hanging him yet, or they’ll blame the ones as done it and dig in, like me.”

  Dallin was silent for a moment, thinking, then: “And which way d’you think they’ll go?”

  He expected a snort or a glare, but Newell merely shrugged, kept his gaze on the night. “They’re good people,” he answered. “They’ll tumble as good people ought.”

  Dallin hoped that meant they’d go the way of the latter speculation.

  “There’s two more at the hostel, and three again down the livery,” Newell informed him. “And just about everyone who’s gone down to Garson’s has gone armed.” He dipped a decisive, confident nod. “You can sleep with both eyes closed tonight, Constable Brayden.”

  Besides worrying about everyone down the inn accidentally shooting each other, he likely would.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Newell.” Dallin gave the man a grave smile and a casual salute.

  Newell nodded, said, “Cap’n.”

  Dallin watched him melt into the dark again, until he couldn’t tell anymore where Newell ended and murky shadow began, then he turned and went inside.

  Locke looked relaxed and at ease when he opened the door. Her boots were propped up on the desk as usual, and a small pile of papers sat at her elbow; but her eyes were bright and alert, shoulders tensed, and her right arm was crooked beneath the desk. Dallin had no doubt that at least one barrel of some likely very powerful weapon was aimed right at his chest. She visibly unfurled when she saw it was him, raised her eyebrows.

  “Wasn’t sure when I should expect you back,” she drawled. “Out on business or pleasure?”

  Dallin couldn’t imagine what kind of pleasure there was to be had in this little backwater—sans Miss Jillian, which… just… no—so he merely lifted an eyebrow, ignored the question. He glanced over into Calder’s— Wil’s cell. Still sleeping, and still curled in like he was trying to make himself disappear. That infuriating bit of compassion crept into Dallin’s chest, roosted like it meant to stay, and he sighed.

  “He been asleep the whole while?” he asked, walked slowly over to the stove and helped himself to tea. He held up the pot to Locke, questioning; she shook her head and nodded to the mug on her desk.

  She waited until he sat down across from her before answering him in low tones. “I fed him and gave him the draught Lara sent over about an hour ago, but I’m not even sure he’s asleep now. That one…” She shook her head, flicked a glance toward the cell and then back again. “He’s… quiet.”

  Dallin’s eyebrows went up. Not an especially heinous offence, in his own opinion. And not entirely true.

  He cocked his head to the side, eyed
her speculatively. “You don’t like him.”

  Locke frowned, shrugged. “Say rather I don’t trust him.” She paused, directed another narrow stare at the cell. “He’s the look about him of a man who’s sold his soul.”

  Dallin pondered that for a moment, blew out a weary sigh. “He may have done,” he mused after a while. “But he didn’t sell it cheaply.”

  Locke only shrugged a little, waved a hand. “I imagine you had plenty of time to talk.”

  “Unfortunately.” Dallin grimaced, took a sip of thankfully strong tea beneath her questioning regard. “I didn’t find out much that will help. Sorry. Except I’m fairly certain it wasn’t him who did… whatever it was that happened. I don’t think he’s capable.”